SHOW AND TELL
Bring a picture of your family
Topic: Amazing Me
How special we all are
The value is reliance, which means being confident about our abilities and about our judgment.
For safety, we’ll learn we can say “NO!” if someone hurts us or someone we know.
Outside, we’ll play hopscotch.
The songs we’ll be singing are Let’s Go Fly a Kite, Circle of Life, Rock Around the Clock, He’s Got the Whole World, and Do Your Ears Hang Low?
For creative dramatics, we’ll imagine different kinds of feelings.
Our art activities are warm fuzzies, happy to be me, people puzzle, and fingerprint critters.
For motor development, we’ll work on coordination by moving a body part. For postural response, we’ll play balloon pass, mail carrier, belly ball, and wheelbarrow.
BUILDING IMAGINATION
Imagination is so much a part of the essence of our humanity. It’s also a large part of our success as adults. Up to about the age of 5 children have an incredible imagination. After that, they begin to socialize, and our educational systems gradually dampen the vividness that was originally there. As a parent, you can do a lot to train yourself as well as your child in exploring possibilities. These particular exercises were developed by a creative dramatics teacher.
Reading a Story – When you’ve settled in for a lovely quiet time, select a story that has no pictures or don’t show the pictures. Limericks and rhymes can work nicely. As you read the story, ask questions like:
What are the characters’ names?
What are they like (strong, kind, magical, etc.)?
What do they look like?
Where do they live?
When did it happen?
What problems/obstacles did the characters have?
How is the problem solved (resolution)?
An extension of this last question takes you even further in creative thinking. You can use “What if” questions like “What if the dog hadn’t run away” or “What if Mr. Potts had gone to the market instead of to sleep?”
Building a Story – This is a great waiting or traveling game. Begin by building characters. Develop them in a lot of detail – what they look like, how they walk, where they live, when the story happens. For little children this can be somewhat difficult because their experience is so limited. You might want to make it a point to enable your child to have a lot of experiences such as being at the beach at night, what does the really cold water feel like when swimming, how does a fish flop around when it’s caught. Put words with these experiences either at the time or that night in the quiet after the lights are turned off.
Then have an obstacle. The obstacle should have a great deal of interest. For example, a story about crossing the room is boring unless “Suddenly the floor turned to ice, and I began slipping and sliding out of the door”, all spoken in a crisis voice. Then develop a resolution. This is fun to act out if you’re in a place for acting. Or you might decide to illustrate the story you’ve created and send the drawing to Grandmother.
In all cases, exercises in creativity expand the limits of how a child deals with situations that present themselves. They make the life that the child lives that much more vivid and interesting. And it makes your experiences with your child that much deeper.
For Your Information
Enhancing Creativity –Our brains are engineered to be efficient. “The usual” is more efficient, and the most educated brain will fight to stay in its normal patterns and long-held beliefs. Make it a practice to do something different every day; take a different route to work, call your mother, wear an orange hat. As we move to get back to normal consider this; with your family, have a “shake it up supper”: Make a party buffet. Use party foods, decorate the table, and have music and dancing afterwards. Picnic in the house. Spread a blanket on the floor, use picnic plates, and have pretend ants (raisins?) everywhere. Do a crazy dinner. Do breakfast foods at night. Have dessert first. Have foods all of one color.
CLASSROOM NEWS
This week Dawson was introduced to the hundred board, this complex work will help him learn to numbers 1 – 100, and build his confidence to identify numbers and place them in the order they come in. On the playground this week Kez shouted with excitement “grasshopper, look at the grasshopper!” After getting a closer look it was not a grasshopper it was a green Cicada, Some students wanted to step on the beautiful insect, others threw sand at it while others were a bit fearful of the gentle creature. It was a perfect time for a playground lesson. At school we encourage the students to respect nature and never harm any creature. The students were also told how Cicada’s only come up from underground every 7 and they make a loud sound similar to crickets.
Recent Comments